I grew up swimming here every summer
Velika near Larisa in Central Greece
It is amazing how productive you are when you stay off Twitter! Today I finished my biggest annual work project. I always celebrated by going to see a movie. Those were the preblog days!
Do I have blogitis? Is there a cure? I think about this darn blog constantly! Why do I keep going? I need to sleep more…random thoughts…
Not much happening yesterday in blogosphere. Not as many posts and not much great content either. Not sure why…there are days like this. And for crying out loud for some people out there, for the billionth time, do not take me that seriously and you do not take yourselves that seriously too. Lighten up, will ya?
I always love to hear from you with any comments/feedback/insult/tips on what to cover, etc. Ways to contact me:
email: travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/FlyerTalkerinA2
Find me at FlyerTalk and Milepoint as: gpapadop
VIRGIN ATLANTIC PRIZE UPDATE:
Thank you to the readers who commented in the short time I had that blog post up asking for help in my prize dilemma. I took the whole post down as I decided to go for broke and see if they could accomodate two in Upper Class. It was a long shot and was shut down. In the meantime I confirmed that the 1099 tax form will be $980 and the nice gentleman I am working with insists I have a pretty good shot for an upgrade. I have no time to put this trip together for a while. Getting my wife to Paris directly with miles, and me continuing on an Avios flight to Paris, along with me getting to/from JFK while booking a nice hotel in Paris those days…well, this is not going to be simple. At the very least, I am going alone for a few days at least. Thanks for all the help!
BEST OF
I was watching CNN at the gym today and saw the Qatar Airines CEO being visibly angry with all the issues with Boeing’s Dreamliner. I don’t blame him at all!
Loyalty Lobby lists all the January 2013 Hotel Promotions.
Frequent Miler tells us how to maximize the triple points on the Club Carlson promotion. That’s great. But do we really need more CC points? I have been asking for a long time for a blogger to do a Top 5 Club Carlson properties type of blog post. Anyone, anyone? Instead, they can produce a post with Chase Ink cards in a heartbeat!! The blogger who makes a worthy post about this will be featured here and will be given a one day free pass from my infamous “Not So Best Of” category…aha, that should take care of this then:-)
Miles, Points & Mai Tais follows up with “Credit Card Spending for the Rest of Us“. Very detailed post on all the different ways you can crank out points. It could have been broken to two parts or more, there is a LOT of information here! In addition, she copied my background;-)
Kathy at Will Run for Miles wrote “The Anatomy of a Blogging Frenzy” which sums up well the whole buzz two nights ago on the 100k AmexPlatinum deal. I happened to be online and watched the whole thing unfold. I still have all the bloggers’ posts about this with the time stamp and could do an investigative piece again like I did with the US Air credit cards. But I can not make the time…I have enough trouble making time for these buzz posts!!! It could be fun laying out all the blogger HT practices, etc.
Pointsandtravel.com reports that we can NOT use a credit or debit card at the Vatican. I am mad as hell, this is a Sin, repent!!!! This world is sure going to hell with sickening developments like this!
Amazing HD travel video “A Sublime Disruption“. Saw it at Gadling.
17 things your Flight Attendant Won’t Tell you Some are hilarious. Such as: “Don’t ask me where you can shove your bag. I’ve been waiting 12 years to tell you where you can shove it.”
Parag at Frequent Flyer University continues his India trip report. Excellent commentary and pictures. The kid worked hard at this.
The Bluebird thread on FlyerTalk had a pretty crazy day as it appears one member ended with a Vanilla Reload card with missing digits. To make the long story short, there are some really sharp people in that thread, police detectives types who determined that this was an inside job,fraud! Better take a look to see if your VR has been compromised at all (almost impossible to determine) and LOAD the card on your BlueBird asap! Story developing. It appears an isolated incident! RELAX!!!
Upgrd has a story titled “Air France/KLM Flying Blue lives in the Stone Age“. Horrifically dismal customer service, wow! Mental note: Do NOT burn their miles for travel to Africa, no way senor, life is too precious to deal with such crap!
NOT SO BEST OF
I think I am getting immune to all the BS and there is so much of it I can smell it for miles away! I see all the Amex Platinum blog posts in my Google Reader and some of them make me throw up in my mouth. I know you all miss this section! But really I did not see any glaring crap fly at eye sockets today. Actually, I am tired and I need some sleep. I did wonder why Milevalue posted all that about the Chase cards and no foreign transaction fees stuff….Zzzzzz
ODDZ & ENDZ
Now you can trade Tide for crack!
Man hires “assassin” to kill son’s World of Warcraft avatar” Love it!!!! I would love to hire this guy if he is that good!!!
I’ll have a post tomorrow morning with my own breakdown of the deal, from my perspective. Hoping it will be an interesting read.
Great, looking forward to it!
love this blog! keep up the good work George
Thanks a lot. Trying to, do not want to be associated with anything else other than high quality content as I think of myself as a high quality kind of guy. That was a joke:-)
Not lookin for a fight, but this Amex Plat offer was via creditcards dot com. Any idea what their referral commission is……..??
It is much much lower than what the Flex Offers links pay! And you can take that to the bank (pun intended)
It was Travel Summary that posted the Amex Plat deal hours before anyone else did. I used his link, since Rick and Darius didn’t have it posted. Now if George would have had a link in his blog (still hard to find), I would have used the TBB link. Ha!
dhammer
Are you saying what I think you are saying? 😉 Actually, this whole blog idea is a novelty and is becoming an obsession. I have several prospects in my real job lined up wanting to talk to me…I actually want them to go away because if they come aboard this blog may not last! What a weird situation…wanting potential clients (wanting to pay me) to not bother me so I can have more time to work on this blog getting paid nothing. Talk about a very bizarre situation!
So…I keep going until I go down fighting…
#developing
Looking at $$$ and monetizing is like a startup looking how to get bought/do IPO and not focusing on the actual product/service! So….focusing on content, content, content….while decreasing therapist bills, lol!
Are you absolutely sure it was the BA Visa with the increased referral bonus and not the SPG Amex?
Also, LOL at his “churning challenge”. This “churn” actually required 210K previously earned UR points, staying with family in Bangkok, and over $21,000 in minimum spend requirements in the first 4 months
FTG….. showing you how to have your dream travel with a mere churn*
*so long as you factor in lots of caveats, and recommending newbies to the hobby spend over 20K in minimum spend
Yeah, I am starting to have doubts about which cc is on sale right now at the aff networks! I wish I had an inside view, it would be hilarious! I could have posts such as “Warning,warning: Tomorrow, expect XXXX Mastercard eye socket attack, take cover!!!”
I am getting to that post eventually…
Qatar’s CEO is always angry. Remember how he denied QR was joining oneworld? LOL
Oh yes, how can I forget that! He is quite a character for sure.
A lot of filler posts in the blogosphere today for that Virgin-Singapore promo that maybe 3 people can take advantage of
I saw that…I just don’t bother mentioning these types of posts for exactly the reason you stated!
Wow, judging from the comments in FTG’s churning challenge, that post is even more pathetic than I first realized
What we now know about his “churning challenge” to help the family get where they want:
1) He used 210K previous earned UR points as part of this “churning challenge”
2) He used “stay by family in Bangkok (they never could’ve figured that out without Rick’s guidance!)
3) He recommended a churn to newbies which required over 20K spend in 4 months
4) He completely fudged the actual costs of flight tickets to make it look better than it actually was
5) He recommended they stay in a hotel which apparently doesn’t allow 4 people in a room
Way to help out those newbies! No wonder they go to your blog!
Whenever I see your handle I chuckle…and it reminds me that Prince guy…whatever happened to him, totally disappeared from the music scene. Hope he did not die or something…shows how much I am in touch with the celebrity stuff.
I scan these churning challenges fast. It is pretty much the same cards over and over. I don’t bother anymore. If his readers find them helpful, all the best for them.
Yeah, most of his churning challenges are bland and serve as little purpose other than an excuse to embed links (how to go to the Carribean for free…. step 1, open a US airways card. step 2, open 4 hilton cards)
But this one was particularly noteworthy, because it contained a lot of cheating, number fudging, bad advice to newbies, and providing flat out wrong information
Rhetorical question…. if he pockets affiliate $$$ telling them to get Hilton cards to stay at the Hilton Shinjuko…. only for the family to find out they’re not allowed to stay there….. is Rick going to give them the affiliate $$$ he pocketed due to incorrect information given to them? An apology for hurting their credit score to attain hotel nights that were never a possibility?
TAFKAA…nice acronym there.
I am working on the post for tomorrow. The MVP post is about a real travel blogger. No miles, no credit cards, no BS. And I like the way he calls it…
And other great stuff…
I used to love Rick’s blog…Let’s move on!